''Acanthocladium dockeri'' is a critically endangered species of the family
Asteraceae
The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...
that belongs to the
monotypic
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...
genus ''Acanthocladium''. It is commonly known as spiny everlasting or spiny daisy. It is native to
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, and is found around the
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
n town of
Laura
Laura may refer to:
People
* Laura (given name)
* Laura, the British code name for the World War I Belgian spy Marthe Cnockaert
Places Australia
* Laura, Queensland, a town on the Cape York Peninsula
* Laura, South Australia
* Laura Bay, a bay on ...
.
Description
The spiny everlasting is a woody
perennial
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...
shrub
A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...
with spines at branch ends, covered in short white hair. It bears oblong, bumpy fruit.
Spiny everlasting was presumed extinct in 1992, having suffered habitat loss from clearance for winter crops, but various colonies of it have been found around Laura, near the
Spencer Gulf
The Spencer Gulf is the westernmost and larger of two large inlets (the other being Gulf St Vincent) on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, facing the Great Australian Bight. It spans from the Cape Catastrophe and ...
.
Homonym
In 1883,
William Mitten
William Mitten (30 November 1819 – 20 July 1906), was an English pharmaceutical chemist and authority on bryophytes who has been called "the premier bryologist of the second half of the nineteenth century".
He built up a collection of some ...
used the same name, ''Acanthocladium'', to refer to a group of mosses, now in the family
Sematophyllaceae. Several dozen species of mosses were described and place in this genus before it was realized that Mittenn's name represented an illegitimate
homonym
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, ...
. The moss genus has since been renamed ''
Wijkia'' H.A. Crum.
Tropicos Acanthocladium Mitt.
/ref>
References
Bibliography
*
*
Gnaphalieae
Monotypic Asteraceae genera
Flora of South Australia
Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller
{{Gnaphalieae-stub